Marriages face enormous challenges to stay connected with all of life’s ups and downs. And your marriage is at risk of being swallowed up if you are not prepared.     

In this week’s post, I will build upon last week’s blog where I talked about those repeating “groundhog day” challenges that we all seem to have. Like anything in life, the more you prepare, the better equipped you are to handle whatever comes your way.  So what do you do when you encounter conflicts in your marriage. Does it bring you together or push you further apart?  Maybe by finally tackling conflicts the right way, your life, and your marriage would never be the same again.   

Like it or not, all couples have to learn the art of handling conflicts—and how to resolve it together by seeking out and giving forgiveness freely to each other, in mutual love and respect. This is no easy task but this is one of the best and most powerful ways to protect your marriage from the destructive power of conflicts.  Early in my marriage, I messed up royally, and if it wasn’t for my wife choosing to forgive, our marriage would have ended long ago. This may be new for you to hear but I believe God’s original idea for marriage was so that man and woman would be a holy union – “for this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and they shall become one flesh,” Gen 2:24

Becoming “one flesh” means more than the physical. Marriage is also a spiritual and emotionally connected union. The reality is that in marriage you are one, yet we are still very much individuals who can sometimes not agree on a variety of issues.

Most couples have that one issue that seems to come up again and again. Last week’s blog was all about that very topic. I would encourage you if haven’t already to take a moment and go read  What a Movie Can Teach Us about Loving our Spouse so you can start to identify what specific conflicts you have in your marriage.    

You may be asking, what is so wrong with conflict? Well conflict at its core isn’t necessarily an argument; it can take many forms—sometimes conflict can cause us to avoid communication, and it creates internal conflict within us.  A few things we all need to remember about conflict:

• It is inevitable in a marriage
• It can wound
• It creates isolation
• It doesn’t get better with time if you leave it unresolved
• It requires forgiveness

I have learned that forgiveness isn’t itself the healing, but healing is impossible without it.  If you are truly offering forgiveness, you can’t keep bringing up what you said you have forgiven as a weapon. You have to find a way to move on.  The good news however is that when a couple is committed to not winning a conflict at all costs but rather seeking the good of the relationship as a whole, restoration is possible. 

Conflict is one of those challenges all of us will face at some point in our marriage. The choice we have before us is what we will do once it comes.    

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic.  How have you managed conflict successfully and what advice would you give another couple struggling with it? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Your Virtual Life Mentor,

Doug